"What a marvellous player Janet Hilton is!"

Contents

• Biography and Performance Profile
• Critical Notices
• Teaching and Education Profile
• Discography
• New Releases
• Contact Information

Janet Hilton was born in Liverpool and studied in Manchester and Vienna. Since making her BBC debut at 20 playing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto she has built an international reputation as one of today’s most distinguished clarinettists.

In Britain Janet Hilton has played at many festivals, including Aldeburgh, Bath, Cheltenham, City of London, Edinburgh, Harrogate and at the BBC Promenade Concerts and performed with a wide range of distinguished partners, including most of Britain’s leading orchestras. In Europe her work has included concertos and recitals in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Hamburg, Rome and Naples,  chamber music at the Gstaad Festival and Incontri in Tierra di Siena. North American appearances have included concertos in Toronto, Ottawa and Colorado Springs, recitals and chamber music in Chicago and  Michigan, where for twenty years she has been a member of the Fontana Ensemble.

Her extensive list of recordings for the Chandos label includes the chamber music of Brahms and Weber with the Lindsay String Quartet, Peter Frankl and Keith Swallow, trios by Mozart, Bruch and Schumann with Nobuko Imai and Roger Vignoles, Weber’s Concertos with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Neeme Järvi, the Stanford Concerto with the Ulster Orchestra and Vernon Handley and the Nielsen and Copland Concertos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Mathias Bamert. For EMI she recorded Malcolm Arnold’s first Clarinet Concerto and for ASV the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with the Lindsays. Her most recent recording, of four concertos written for her by Alun Hoddinott, John McCabe, Edward Harper and Dame Elizabeth Maconchy was released in 2001 on the Clarinet Classics label.

Parallel with her solo career, Janet Hilton has always enjoyed orchestral playing and teaching, as Principal Clarinet of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Welsh National Opera, Kent Opera and of the Manchester Camerata and on the staff of conservatoires in Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham. Since 1998 she has been Head of Woodwind at the Royal College of Music in London.

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"Rare lightness and grace, shaped with the quiet freedom of a great singer."
FINANCIAL TIMES

"A warm richness of tone, a felicity of phrasing, a rhythmic vivacity such as would not readily be surpassed by any other clarinettist."  
THE HERALD, GLASGOW

• 1998 - Present:
  Head of Woodwind, Royal College of Music, London

• 1993 - 1998:
  Head of Woodwind, Birmingham Conservatoire

• Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
• Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow

• Royal Northern College of Music
• University of Bristol
• University of Illinois, USA
• University of Central Michigan, USA
• Notre Dame University, USA
• University of Indianna, Bloomington
• Singapore Conservatoire

• BBC Young Musician of the Year
• National Federation of Music Societies Young Artists Award
• Geoffrey Hawkes Clarinet Prize, Royal Academy of Music
• Lombard and Ulster Music Foundation
• Audi Young Musician
• Music for Youth
• Concerto Internazionale di Musica di Duino, Italy
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Young Musician, Canada
• Royal Overseas League Competition
• Maisie Lewis Young Artists Award